2016 results: Alex Nichiporchik from tinyBuild on how the players have changed

Year for the company

We started the year with Twitch Plays Punch Club – and suddenly everything started to snowball: we started releasing games simultaneously on consoles and PCs; we released our most popular game – SpeedRunners – from Early Access; we invested heavily in content.

The second largest “explosion” this year is Hello Neighbor. We have successfully launched a paid alpha and started putting Easter eggs in builds. The people have gone crazy. An example of a video theory in Russian.

The biggest personal change for me is moving to the USA. I finished building a studio in Amsterdam, which is engaged in porting published games to the console. Now we are building a studio in Seattle that will deal with ports to “other” platforms.

Event of the year in the world

Gamers stopped buying the same thing every year. The result is visible on the sales of Titanfall 2 and Call of Duty. For the same reason, we haven’t seen Assassins Creed new this year. This comes at the same time as the audience’s disappointment in No Man’s Sky.

Now we will see much more cautious gamers if the case relates to hype. Game Dev as such has become much more transparent. Today, more than ever, gamers are interested in the development process as well as the result itself.

Trend of the year

We saw how streamers have grown, how AAA publishers have started pouring money into them. For us, the trend of the year was the growing influence of Twitch on the popularity of games.

We also see how users need to submit much more hours of play for every dollar, if compared with previous years. Here, non-linear games in the style of sandboxes and bagels immediately take priority. People expect crafting, procedural generation and a bunch of content.

Game of the Year

Battlefield 1. A wonderful game. Ballistics is well developed, the feeling of running is very dynamic, and the game looks stunning. I recommend it to everyone.